Times Past wrote:If you have been watching 10,000BC does anyone not think that the 'tribe' wasnt set up to fail by the TV company?

Personally speaking I think it may have been half and half. First, yes, I think the production company did want to show that the Mesolithic era was not "The Flintstones" or "10,000BC" (movie) but as to whether they wanted them to fail, that's a more tricky question. Plus as they said on a number of occasions "You cannot rewind 12,000 years of evolution"

It’s telling of the producers’ intentions when knowing there is a lake they locate the camp a two hour walk away from it and ostensibly leave it to the group to find it by chance. Lakeshores not the middle of forests are the preferred settlement location for hunter gathers.

If this programme was truly experimental archaeology they producers would have selected 20 people most likely to survive the experience, experimental archaeologists and people like the Commandos and RAF who might have gone on survival courses. But they picked a group amongst who most had no useful skills and the rest is predictable. But then when shorn of pretentions to discover something new about the Stone Age it’s just another weird reality TV programme.

Whilst conscious of reviving a somewhat defunct thread, it is fair to say the subject matter is close to my heart.

There is a well-written archaeological blog entry at http://www.therocksremain.org/2015/02/real10000bc-this-is-not-mesolithic.html that carefully explains why that sorry excuse for a 'reality' show bore very little resemblance to the realities of living in 10,000 BC, which was technically the upper Palaeolithic and not the Mesolithic. Europe around this time was in the grip of the Younger Dryas climate event, and although it wasn't a full-blown Ice Age complete with massive ice sheets, it was still a hell of a lot colder than the conditions the show was filmed in.

Far from dispelling stereotypes about the Flintstones, the show's producers opted to dress the participants as extras from the Flintstones Movie, and issued them with modern walking boots in case they got their poor little tootsies wet. When I put my interpretation of Palaeolithic clothing together one of the enduring mysteries for me was how they kept their feet dry, and I'm sure re-enactors from later periods have wondered this too. The answer is they probably trudged around with damp feet and got used to it. Warm is possible, dry is less so. It took me ten days to get my clothing together using tanned hides and the modern equivalent of ancient tools - I doubt very much whether the producers wanted to film a fortnight's worth of animal hide processing and sewing, so Flintstones it was.

Nominating a skilled archer as the group leader was pointless, a) because he wasn't allowed to use his bow and arrow for H&S reasons, and b) as far as anyone knows the bow and arrow wasn't yet around in 10,000 BC. Equipping them with bows and arrows was like giving Vikings Lee Enfields. The group were not equipped with even the most basic survival skills, and they weren't actually allowed to hunt because wild pigs (shock horror) become angry and dangerous when cornered or wounded and facing imminent death. Likewise the abundant herds of roaming prehistoric reindeer were strangely absent from the local 21st century forest. Instead they just apportioned out their meagre food rations to suit the length of the experiment and lost a lot of weight in the process. A week after the end of filming they'd have been starving, as they were doing no hunting, very little gathering, and were living a long walk from the nearest lake.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this whole show was the promise that it would be repeated. If you're tempted, just say no - there has to be a better way to spend two months than slowly starving in Flintstones costume in the depths of a Bulgarian forest.